


Some Thing

by monsterbate



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Book: Anne's House of Dreams - L. M. Montgomery, Daydreaming, Distracted by Sex, Experimental Style, F/M, So Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25740382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterbate/pseuds/monsterbate
Summary: They had often planned to go, butsomethingalways occurred to prevent them.  (Anne's House of Dreams, L.M. Montgomery)(Anne Shirley thinks aboutthat.)
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 24
Kudos: 97





	Some Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Last year I reread _Anne's House of Dreams_ and stumbled across the line quoted above— _They had often planned to go, but something always occurred to prevent them_ —and I thought: YUP TOTES DOING IT. And like the completely mature adult that I am, here's a few hundred words on _that_.

When Anne Shirley was a girl, she had built castles in the clouds full of all the wonders of a world she could only imagine: palaces and princesses and kingdoms and jewels and more. It wasn’t until after she’d come to Green Gables and discovered her place and her family that she found herself dreaming of life a little less grand and a little more familiar.

What would life be like, as a person with a family—as a Married Woman? Responsible for cooking and mending and cleaning—all horrid chores, yes, but to do them would mean that there was a home and a family to do them for! And what a glorious burden, the need to do _chores_.

This imagining lasted until she’d cooked her seventh pudding and hemmed her fourth sheet and cleaned her ninth window—the sameness of it all made the glory go right out of it. But that left her to contemplate all the _other_ particulars of Married Life. 

Marilla, as it turned out, was no good for that sort of wondering: to begin with, she hadn’t ever been married and when Anne did try to broach the subject with her, Marilla’s mouth had twisted up and she’d sent Anne out to gather eggs and mind her manners. 

“There are some things no decent girl should be asking about, and _that_ is one of them,” she had said, and Anne wondered what other sorts of things girls shouldn’t be asking about.

So Anne stopped asking and had instead started imagining the other particulars of a Married Life with the sort of blind fervor only a teenaged girl can, thrilling herself with the very wickedness of imagining _that_. Her future husband would be very handsome, of course, with golden hair and brilliant blue eyes and the sort of charm that would woo even the dour Marilla into swooning fits. He’d have to be from Somewhere Else, too; none of the Avonlea boys even ranked in the annals of her Ideal.

Years later, Anne’s imagined hero had grown darker but no less fervid. And she considered how he would storm into her life, sweep her into his arm, murmur wicked things into her greedy ears… There had been a few whispered conversations with the other girls of Avonlea that added new shades to her romantic fancies—although Josie Pye’s insistence in giggling about everything was completely unnecessary. No girl should be that shocked by the idea of a decent pair of shoulders, _honestly_. 

Her dreams were a strange catharsis: her world didn’t need to be bound by the roads or rivers leading in and out of Avonlea. She could put herself anywhere at all with anyone she chose and wasn’t that something wonderful? She could create for herself a brooding, passionate man who would devote himself to her and they would spend their days together, and their nights together, and their _lives_ together… They would be a family, and he would be _hers_. 

When Diana announced her betrothal, Anne thought she might finally learn what sorts of things went on between Married Folks—even though Diana was marrying _Fred_. But Diana would do no more than blush beetroot red, shy and sly and knowing. “There are just some things you must discover for yourself, dear,” she said, “and _that_ is one of them.” Anne tried not to feel betrayed. What sorts of secrets were worth keeping from your truest friends? 

With Redmond came Roy, handsome poetic Roy, who praised her and held her and never managed to quite live up to the dreams she’d spin in the gardens of Patty’s Place. Even with the thrill of his kiss still burning on her lips, she’d find herself dreaming of other kisses and other lips. Married Life, she was sure, wouldn’t—couldn’t—feel quite so...incomplete, would it?

It wasn’t until Gil—until his warm kisses in Lover’s Lane and whispered promises of their life to come and his arms firm around her—that all her imaginings began to feel much more _real_. The lips were _his_ lips; the kisses _his_ kisses. The shoulders—the hands—they were _his_ and he was _hers_ and she was _his_ and—

Suddenly her well-worn wonderings about Married Life were brought out to be reexamined and turned and shook out in the light. There would, of course, be the cooking and mending and cleaning—but there would also be Gil and he would be her _husband_ and there would be _that_. And _that_ would be—oh. 

It was at some point during their engagement—those years filled with absolute torrents of imaginings—that Anne realized that the beetroot blush of a bride (or bride-to-be) was inescapable. Gil answered her letter about the blush by assuring her he found all her shades of red delightful and that some things were worth waiting for. He drew little carrots in the margins. Anne read the letter until its folds split and the paper tore clean through.

And then—and then— 

They were Married. The ceremony was lovely and the bride radiant and the groom handsome and the families teary and joyous. Anne stole a kiss before they departed for their honeymoon and the conflagration was enough to make her feel dazed, frizzled, and It was a perfect wedding but for the _waiting_.

That night, Anne set aside her imaginings and discovered the things a Married Woman needed to know. She discovered _that_.

::

“How are you liking married life, my Anne-girl?” Gil asked her one evening weeks later when they were abed, the room lit by moonlight and their own hazy bliss. She was half-drowsing, comfortably tucked under his arm. “Does it suit, do you think?”

She pressed her smile into his chest and stretched luxuriously. “It’s wonderful, of course. Everything I have ever dreamed of, even if I do have to do the windows.”

Gil laughed, voice achingly intimate in the closeness of their bedroom. “What did you dream of, when you dreamt of this?” he asked after a moment. She could hear the teasing in it, as well as a thread of the old uncertainty and she drew an absent pattern against his shoulder as she let her mind wander over the ruins of her childhood castles and the homesteads of her youth. 

“I dreamt of a house, much like this house. And a husband, much like this husband. And little things—the cooking and sewing and things I would want to do only because it would be my house and my husband to do them for.”

“I see,” Gil said. “And what of all those sunbursts and marble halls? You aren’t missing them, are you?”

She set her chin on his chest and wrinkled her nose at him. “I think they’d be awfully frustrating to clean, and so time consuming! What about you, dearest; does marriage suit you?”

“That’s the silliest question I’ve ever heard,” Gil answered, and the rest of his response was best left between a wife and her husband.

::

She discovered that being a Married Woman required a certain amount of forbearance: a husband who preferred plum pudding to fruit and clotted cream, for example, required a little more effort in the kitchen. Or a husband who leaves his collars in the parlor should only be scolded once a week rather than oftener. And sometimes a husband might forget to mend a thing that needs mending because the neighbor’s horse had gotten loose and he’d spent the evening scowling at the fence he thought responsible.

But all those things were nothing to— 

To that. To nights spent learning a new language, a new familiarity, a new landscape. To the discoveries of once-secret corners of her husband’s body. To time exploring all the numerous ways to hold fast to the vows of love and life. 

How was a Married Woman to get anything done when she had all _that_?

It wasn't a problem, necessarily. Not in the traditional sense. But when they had ought to go out and Gil would pause at the door, his hat in his hand, and look at her like _that_ , well. That was an entirely different sort of problem.

Anne Shirley Blythe often knew what she ought to do but rarely had _ought_ ever gotten her the things she _wanted_. Like discovering how freckled Gil's shoulders looked in the sunlight pooling through Marilla's lace curtains. Or how softly familiar the moonlit looked in the sliver of time before dawn when she’d creep to the door and let the nighttime winds stir her hair. 

Captain Jim would tease them, of course, when he’d stop by. The first time Anne had blushed bride-red and wondered if Jim suspected them of _that_ , but he’d merely accepted another slice of cake and hmm’d over his tea before telling another of his tales. 

And as Anne saw him to the door, she’d promise herself that next time, next time—she and Gil wouldn’t let _anything_ stop them from making it all the way to Four Winds. They’d hold firm and not fall, again, into the depths of temptation. 

Except that, always, Gil would hesitate at the threshold and there would be that thrill, and then—

 _That_.


End file.
